New Market Focuses on Eating Well and Education

Toby Lankford knows about locally grown food.

He's been farming his whole life. He opened Tierra Linda Natural Farms about five years ago, and now he's bringing all that knowledge to an aruban market on Washington Street.

"It's a great space. We can produce a lot of food we believe here. We're going to be trying to create a learning farm. We'll be doing aquaponics, we'll be doing sprouts, micro greens,we'll be selling locally to local restaraunts and individuals. But it's really mainly about education and awareness on some of the issues that are in Amarillo," Lankford said.

For Lankford, those issues are things like hunger, mis-use of resources and not knowing where our food comes from.

"We believe that we were stonger as a community, as a country, when we were local ag based economies. And so our stress is really local economies. But to vote with your dollar, and you can shop local. You choose every day what kind of world you want to live in by what you go and spend your money on," Lankford said.

The Mariposa Urban Market is an extension of the larger Mariposa non-profit project located north of the city. They started work on the market in the beginning of January and hope to have the place open for sales and workshops by the end of February.

Much of the money will to funding that project and others like it in the community.

Right now, Lankford is working to get programming and gardens started at local schools.